Thursday, November 5, 2009

Jobs Friday

No, not Steve Jobs. Jobs jobs. BLS reports on October jobs tomorrow. Gallup.com has already given me the real answer. Hiring has not picked up. And banks are by all accounts not yet lending, so businesses continue to consolidate.

Nonetheless, data is (are) data. Last month, what was truly disturbing was the massive job loss in the household survey. If there had no been numerous total drop-outs from the labor force, the unemployment rate would have been reported as 10+% in that October report. While the so-called establishment survey is also of interest, it is highly likely that that result will be better than reality, as it is skewed to the larger companies that, well, are established. The household survey is based on phone surveys.

Also please check out the so-called birth-death adjustment. It has greatly minimized the weakness in the employment situation ever since the economic banana began. Click HERE for a link to the site. It is not part of the BLS news release. "They" don't want people getting to it easily, one might suspect.

Interesting that as more insider trading charges are brought and several important companies stocks' crash on high volume, stocks rally. We are finally seeing stocks bought and Treasuries and gold sold (or at least not bought). A nice day at least in that regard.

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